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Our Towns; Lost Crusader Inspires 'Jenna's Law'

BRUCE AND JANICE GRIESHABER never consciously tried to raise bleeding-heart liberals. They left a suburban tract of split levels and ranches for the wide-open countryside when their girls were 7 and 9 for an old-fashioned reason: They wanted a place where they could keep a firm handle on their daughters' lives.

But the Grieshabers were do-gooders -- he was on the school board, she was the president of the P.T.A., a professional volunteer -- and it caught on. When Jenna, the oldest girl, was in high school, she rattled the administration by organizing a protest against the Persian Gulf war. She wanted to save the whales. She joined environmental groups. She gave her money to the poor. After a brief marriage, she was studying to be a nurse-midwife and planned to join the Peace Corps or a similar program for nurses after graduation.

On Nov. 6, six weeks before her graduation from nursing school, Jenna Grieshaber was murdered in her Albany apartment. The suspect, Nicholas Pryor, 29, was a neighbor who had been released early from prison on a stabbing conviction.

Now, Bruce and Janice Grieshaber wonder what Jenna would have thought of their mission to have ''Jenna's Law'' passed. As Gov. George E. Pataki described it in a news conference in March, the law would end parole for first-time violent felons, mandate that felons serve six-sevenths of their terms and impose supervision on the felons after their release.

The Grieshabers, including their other daughter, Erica, 20, a student at Ithaca College, have made the passage of the bill a crusade. They have met with politicians, endured interview after interview with reporters, written letters, given speeches, organized petition drives.

But to many people, Jenna's Law is an election-year gimmick, another bill named for another crime victim that is capitalizing on a climate that has led to the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York and the dismantling of education programs in the state's prisons. The New York State Black and Puerto Rican Legislative Caucus; several newspapers up and down the state and the Correctional Association of New York, a prisoners' rights group, have sounded loud alarms about the bill's fairness and purpose.

STILL, only a recent grand jury probe into allegations that the Pataki administration has granted parole to drug dealers with friends or relatives who are political contributors has cast a shadow over the bill, which many lawmakers have said was almost certain to pass in an election year.

The Grieshabers, who are firmly against the death penalty, say they want the bill to pass on its merits. They realize that it is likely that they are being courted by politicians in an election year. Mrs. Grieshaber said they don't mind this, and don't care who gets the credit for the final bill, as long as it passes.

''What we really would hate is that people think of us as knee-jerk reactionary conservatives acting out of emotion,'' Mrs. Grieshaber said the other day on a visit to the hospital to see her husband, who was recovering from a knee operation.

''Of course, we are full of emotion,'' Mr. Grieshaber said. ''That was our daughter. But we could now do something positive, put a face on the situation that the Parole Board has complained about for years.''

The Parole Board reluctantly released Mr. Pryor in July after he had served two-thirds of his minimum sentence, as required under the regulations for granting prisoners time off for good behavior. He has denied killing Jenna, but has said he was in the apartment when the police arrived in response to a 911 call. The police took up to 50 minutes to open the door while they waited for an animal-control officer to subdue Jenna's dog. ''That's another story,'' Mrs. Grieshaber said. ''It has nothing to do with Jenna's Law.''

Mr. Grieshaber, 51, a former high school teacher who is the vice president of an insurance company, and Mrs. Grieshaber, 48, an assistant teacher of developmentally disabled children who is to graduate later this month with a psychology degree from LeMoyne College in Syracuse, say they have spent a good deal of time thinking about what they want in the bill. ''The sound bite is 'End parole,' '' Mrs. Grieshaber said. ''But we want much more than that.''

''Under Jenna's Law, there would be more rehabilitation and education and counseling in prison,'' Mr. Grieshaber said. Improbable? ''Wanna bet?'' he shot back.

These ideas are not part of the package that the Governor has publicly described. ''But that's O.K. with us,'' Mrs. Grieshaber said. ''We want there to be discussion and debate and fine-tuning on this.''

She said they realized that their idea to notify communities when violent offenders are released was problematic. ''So you scratch that idea, and do something else.'' She sounded as though she could change the world.

Later, Mrs. Grieshaber took a visitor on a tour of Jenna's old haunts. She passed the Dutch Colonial where they lived when Jenna was a baby (''We were very happy''), the tract house where the two girls spent their early years (''There's a pool at the end of the road''), and the mall where Jenna got her first job (''She hated it -- Jenna was not a mall person''). She passed West Genesee High School.

''Jenna had a fine time in that school,'' Mrs. Grieshaber said. It was there that she started challenging the system and was dubbed ''Class Crusader.''